


The Secret Sits

by bearlyepic



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: I hate myself, Multi, Steampunk AU, airship au, demisexual ronan, enjoy, poc blue
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-07
Updated: 2015-08-16
Packaged: 2018-03-10 21:31:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3304187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bearlyepic/pseuds/bearlyepic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lieutenant Richard Gansey III is a young man of good social standing with an easy air of leadership. However, no one can quite figure out his company. From the tiny, but spirited Sergeant Blue Sargent, the Irish ex-pirate Ronan Lynch, a coal boy named Noah to a farmer's son with a way with machines, Gansey had collected quite a crew.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is a steampunk au.  
> A bit on the history:  
> America has basically been farmed for its resources  
> The first revolutionary war failed because Britain was not about to let all that iron and coal disappear  
> weh.

America was born from dust and iron, and its Brigade was built in much the same way. With the industrial revolution came a leap of technology: steam powered cars, trains, ships, and other strange gadgets. There was a scramble for resources: metals and coal in the Old World. Once Britain had filled her skies and demolished her earth, she turned toward new opportunity in the West. The coast had been largely ignored, until it proved the Americas might have some value. Sensing this, Britain used its skyfleet to squash the revolution. 

They came to shaky agreements with the Native Americans, a line dividing the territory. More people, including religious who denied the use of invention, fled to the new world. When it was discovered mineral rich mountains lay beyond the divide, a few select lords, members of the aristocracy, third sons with good names but not wealth, too arrived. They sought opportunity and brought forth the Brigade. It was the first fleet of airships in America. They ravished the country, paving a way until they could plunder their riches.

Richard Gansey the third was a member of such a family, a person of incredibly good standing. His father commanded a total of ten ships in the Brigade, and it was rumored he was in good standing with the Queen. But the Captain could not help but wonder, as he scratched at the heavy white mustache on his upper lip, why the Lieutenant was keeping such odd company. 

First of all, there was Ronan Lynch, an Irishman. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he had a colorful history as a sky pirate, plundering the skies over the Atlantic. The Lieutenant claimed that he was reformed, ready to be a good member of society, but something about the boy’s blatant disregard for authority seemed to say otherwise. 

Then there was that tiny scrap of a boy: Sergeant Blue Sargent. What an odd fellow. You would think, being half-native, that he would have grown tall enough to reach the top bunk, where he was most unfortunately assigned. However, Blue was a sergeant with emphasis on ant. 

The colonel didn’t know much about the smudgy boy in the corner that seemed to follow them like a ghost. He guessed he was some kind of coal boy, but every time the older gentlemen tried to find and scold him for shirking his work, the boy disappeared as if into thin air. 

The only remotely respectable person on board was that Adam chap. He had a good look about him, like a sun-ripened tomato, a very smart tomato. He was a whiz with the machines, making the gears whirr and the steam sing for him. You would hardly think he was born to a backwards kind of people. He didn’t even know how to read when he came aboard. 

They certainly were a colorful crew, the colonel decided, and he was glad to have them aboard his ship, the AS Henrietta. It was Henry for one of the kings. No one quite knew which, as it tended to change depending on who was asking. He sat back, looking through the thick glass at the blue sky and the rolling clouds. The sun was rising on the horizon, making the edge of the earth burn a bright gold. The colonel pulled a watch out of his pocket, checking the clicking of the clock, the mechanical sound of tiny gears reaching his ears. 

It was good flying weather.


	2. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What kind of a name is Blue?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly don't know what we're going to do with you Gansey /shake head  
> Alright, heres an actual chapter from the pov of actual raven cycle characters instead of a weird old guy calling Adam a tomato.  
> I'll be posting new chapters hopefully every 3 days.

Blue had joined the Brigade on impulse. Most people wouldn’t bother hiding their gender and risking their lives just so they could work in cramped conditions thousands of feet above the ground for poor pay and literally no benefits. But it had been one of those things. Y’know, a “you can’t do that” “why yes I can” kind of thing. In any case, she had no marriage prospects, a scandalous background (not to mention terribly short hair), and what seemed like no talents with the family business. But, the girl had looked up in the sky one day and seen the long, black shape of a Brigade Mammoth and she was utterly possessed by the need to be onboard.

So she signed up, thankful for once that she was lacking in the more feminine areas. Loose trousers and shirts replaced her normally hand-made and bizarrely decorated corsets and skirts. She had been quite sad to see them go, but her mother promised she would keep them safe until she returned home.

At the beginning, she was mostly ignored. All of her fellow comrades tended to quite literally overlook her. She didn’t mind. It would be easier to keep her secret and her neck if she didn’t get close to anyone. The first time she met Gansey was completely by accident. 

He had been seeking volunteers to go on the rigging and check the balloon for any leaks. It was exactly the kind of dangerous work Blue wanted to do. Blue was aboard for the wind in her face and the sun on her skin, not slinking around the tiny hallways, twiddling thumbs. It’s not like there was much else, in their time of peace, to be worrying about. She had only gotten to man the guns once, and the “enemy” ship turned out to be one of their own.

So she had stepped forward, dropping her voice a bit. “I’ll do it.”

He looked in that moment as if he had just seen her for the first time. “Alright…” he trailed off, a curious look on his face. He stared at her as if she was a new species. Blue scowled a bit.

“Sergeant Blue Sargent, sir.”

“Didn’t know we had that rank. Awfully long title for such a small person.”

He blinked in surprise at the open hostility on her face.

“No, sir,” she said between gritted teeth, “my name is Blue Sargent.”

“What kind of a name is Blue? Seems a bit silly.”

“It’s my kind of name.” 

“I didn’t mean to-“

Blue left it at that, skittering to join the other young men who were getting fitted in their harnesses. If she stayed any moment longer she might just punch Gansey in his pretty little face. But, alas, he outranked her.

 

 

The first thing Gansey did after meeting Blue was to go straight to Ronan. Despite his penchant for growling and whispering “bloody English” under his breath, he was the only one of them who really knew people. Gansey tended to only be charming to rich old ladies and plantation owners. It was most likely his upbringing.

“What kind of name is Blue?” Ronan snorted through his nose, looking up from where he reclined on his bunk. 

“That’s what I asked! But before I knew it he was stalking away. I think I hurt his feelings.” Gansey confessed, sitting down on the edge of the bunk.

“He’s probably trying to compensate for something,” Ronan suggested. 

“Is he the small one?” A barely whispered voice rang out.

Both Ronan and Gansey turned to see an awkward, slim boy. His face was smudged with black, coal so deeply ingrained in his being that it clung to his clothes and gave him a shadowy, monochrome look. “That one doesn’t have a lot of friends. But he is a good one. I can tell.”

“Have you been spying again, Noah?”

“Not spying… observing.” He did not meet Gansey’s gaze.

“Almost everyone is here…where’s Adam?” Ronan asked.

“Fixing the water heater in the Captain’s quarters,” Noah answered almost instantly.

Gansey looked as if he wanted to ask something, opening before clamping his mouth closed. Instead, he threw his hands in the sir, proclaimed “I don’t want to know how”, and fell backwards over Ronan’s legs.

Ronan hissed and pulled them out from under Gansey.

“If you’re so preoccupied over hurting the kid why don’t you, I don’t know, find him and apologize like a normal person,” Ronan said, twisting out of bed.

Gansey stared at the thick lines of his massive tattoo, before rolling his eyes. “Apologize? Coming from a once wanted criminal?”

“You only need to apologize if you feel guilty,” Noah said. “I don’t think sky-pirates feel guilt.”

“That’s why I like you,” Ronan said, clapping the boy on the shoulder. Noah almost seemed to shatter under it, he seemed so frail. It was hard to believe he was hired to shovel coal all day. “And I’ll have you know, I can name at least three countries that still want me captured.” 

Rubbing his temple, Gansey stared at the bunk above Ronan’s bed, where Adam routinely passed out at night. He just couldn’t seem to get that little Sergeant out of his head. He had a feeling he would be up making airships in bottles all night.


	3. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gansey makes a friend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is chapter two. Things start getting a little more entertaining, I promise. Also sorry these early chapters are so Blue/Gansey-centric. The Pynch will come soon, I promise.

Blue thought it was pretty ambitious to call what they served aboard the AS Henrietta “food”. She poked at the bland, porridge-like material in front of her, and listlessly daydreamed about home. She could almost imagine it now, all the women gathering in the kitchen. Persephone would want to try and bake a new cake recipe she cut out of her French newspaper while Calla complained that Americans didn’t know how to use spices. Blue would kill to have some of Calla’s famous fish stew, a remnant from the days when Calla had lived in the Indies. One cleared throat later, a potential victim presented himself. 

Without further prompt, Gansey took one of the many empty seats around her. 

“Listen, Sergeant Sargent,” Gansey started, “I wanted to apologize.”

 

Blue said nothing, instead digging into her breakfast and taking a bland bite.

“It’s just your name is a bit, ah, unusual. I mean, Blue is a color, a very pretty color. I mean, handsome. But wouldn’t you prefer to be called something else like… John? John is a very wholesome name. You know what? I’ll just call you John now.”

Blue stabbed her spoon straight down into her lumpy porridge. Unfortunately, it did not begin to tip.

“Do you even know how to apologize?” She asked slowly, leaning forward to look him straight in the eye.  
His eyebrows knit together, and he looked a bit puzzled. “I thought I just did.”

Blue picked up her spoon again, using it for emphasis, waggling and poking it in Gansey’s direction like it was a sword. “No, you said you wanted to apologize. Saying and wanting and doing are entirely different things. If you want to apologize, you actually have to say two words: I’m sorry.”

“Ah. I’m sorry.”

Blue returned to her breakfast only to find that it had cooled and begun to congeal while she was giving the rich boy pointers on how to act like a normal human being. He probably got his rank and privilege from his family name if this was the best example of his people skills. 

“John?”

Blue refused to respond.

“John, I was hoping we could be friends of sorts.”

“Excuse me, sir?”

“No need to use sir. We’re friends now.”

“And who decided that?”

“We did, just now. I mean, I’m already on first name basis with you.”

Blue almost raised her spoon again to argue before she bit her lip. She had a feeling it would be useless, and her voice tended to get higher-pitched the more high strung she was.

“How about after this meal, I introduce you to some more friends of mine?” Gansey asked in a way that wasn’t really asking. It was the way parents asked if you wanted to do your chores. It was a question that implied there was only one correct answer.

Sighing, Blue placed her spoon back on the tray, not sure that she could stomach both the cold, unappetizing breakfast and whatever the Lieutenant had up his sleeves. 

“You know what? I think I’m done eating.”

 

Ronan was accustomed to not being bothered. It came with the whole bloodthirsty pirate image. There were two places that everyone on board knew to avoid: his bunk and his ship. There was still that rumor going around that he cut off the ears of his enemies. They were wrong, of course, and Ronan couldn’t be bothered to correct them. It was the index fingers, a bit more personal that way. In any case, Ronan was used to being alone. He had had crew members, and comrades, and drinking buddies, but he was not the sort of person who made friends easily. So why had he ended up with Gansey? Well, when he was tasked with finding wanted criminal Ronan Lynch, Gansey had done so almost easily. It made Ronan snort to remember it. That boy could trip over a rock to discover there was a diamond beneath his feet. 

In any case, after gunning down Ronan’s first ship, Gansey had dragged the half-dead Irishman onboard the Henrietta and proceeded to spin a wild tale about how Ronan was misguided and repentant. It made him seem like some kind of story-book character. Gansey thought they believed him because of his spectacular debate skills. 

Ronan knew the ugly truth. He always knew the ugly truth. They wanted his treasure, and they thought they could keep a better eye on him if he was working for them.

But he would never tell them where it was. He wasn’t an idiot.

In fact, the only small little treasure he had from his pirating days, scavenged from the skeleton of his old ship was a little black stone. It fit snugly in the palm of his hand, its shiny surface almost glowing. As he reclined in his bunk, listening to Adam tinker with something above him, Ronan passed the stone back and forth. He was waiting for Gansey to bring that Blue kid over. Ronan didn't know of Gansey was a hoarder or a mother duck. He tended to collect people around him, but the people were all generally rubbish. The Irishman wouldn't be entirely truthful if he said he wasn't interested in meeting the potential new recruit to the Richard Gansey III House for Unwanted Boys.

There was a knock on the door, and Gansey called out a greeting. Ronan turned his head, so he could finally see this legendary Sergeant Sargent. And he couldn’t help but laugh at what he saw. Not the usual Ronan laugh, a short sarcastic huff meant to disarm and cut. It was a full-bellied laugh. It was a someone-better-shut-him-up laugh. Ronan almost had tears in his eyes.

After a few bewildering seconds, Ronan managed to choke out, “Since when the fuck was there a girl on board?”

The little Sergeant’s tanned face lost a bit of color, and Gansey looked thoughtful behind her.

“I guess it should be Jane,” he murmured softly.


	4. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has taken way too long but school has fried my brain. Also sleep is a temptress. Noah is a weird little nugget.

Adam took this opportunity to stick his head out over the edge of the top bunk, squinting down at the figure of Blue. There were a few grease stains on his face, one half rubbed away, as if he had suddenly thought of something else before he could finish scrubbing it. "So the double-sergeant is a girl?" He asked, a distinctively southern drawl in his voice. He didn't see it at first, but now the idea was planted in his head, his eyes picked out those tiny details. There was a softness to her chin and a smoothness of her neck that spoke to something not quite masculine. She was actually quite pretty, even if she was wearing breeches. 

"What? No, I'm not a-" Blue attempted to protest, before Ronan cut her off with a flippant wave of his hand. "I have had plenty of women in my crew. I've also had my ass handed to me by plenty of women. That," he said with a gesture towards her clothes, "is not uncommon clothing for a women in my line of work."

"Don't you mean your ex-line of work?" Adam asked.

"Sure."

The small sergeant looked as if she wanted to protest, her fist clenching and mouth opening. Finally, her shoulders slumped a bit. "Fine. Yes, I am a girl. Lets just get one thing straight. My name is Blue not double-sergeant or Jane or JOHN," she said, turning to give a particularly fierce glare in Gansey's direction.

"Is this the double-sergeant?" A small voice asked as Noah suddenly appeared on the other side of Blue. The girl jumped like a cat in air, and Ronan imagined her spiky black hair sticking straight in the air. It made him grin maliciously. 

Gansey chose this moment to speak up, redirecting Blue. "I guess there are worse things than being a girl."

"Yeah, like what?" Blue asked, hands on hips.

"Could be Irish," Adam responded from the top bunk, ducking his head back when Ronan swung an arm up with a growl.

"I like your hair," Noah said softly from the side again, peering closely at her. Blue's first instinct was to pull away, but there was a deep and steady calmness about Noah that made her refrain. The other boys had so much energy, constantly speaking and moving. The silent way Noah simply existed was a like a void, an empty space among them. It was as if he wasn't entirely present. 

"You like anything that resembles coal," Ronan said with a huff. Within a matter of moments, Ronan was already tired of this intrusion. There was a girl on the ship. That meant she would be captivating the attention of the whole group, like a flame to a bunch of moths. Looking at the way Noah examined her, he could only imagine the dumb look on Adam's face. Plus, there was a way that Gansey kept looking at her from the corner of his eye, like he would get in trouble if he got caught staring. Seeing the stubbornness of the girl, he likely would. 

"I would hope he likes coal, I mean he is a coal boy, Ronan," Adam replied from above. 

At this point, Gansey was pinching the bridge of his nose, an unsettling headache starting to throb around his temples. This presented quite a problem. As Blue's superior, he really ought to report her flagrant violation of all the military's rules. But, at the same time, her secret would not have been revealed if he didn't forcibly march her to meet the rest of the crew. There was a certain amount of responsibility Gansey had to keep the secret. With a sigh, he opened his eyes again.

"Listen. I'm assuming that ah, Ms. Sargent-"

"Sergeant Sargent."

"I thought you didn't like double-sergeant? Oh! It doesn't matter know. I'm assuming that Blue would prefer we keep this whole lady-business between the five of us."

"Four of us," Ronan corrected, returning to staring at the bottom of Adam's bunk, "Noah's gone."

"Alright, four of us."

 

Noah slipped away while they talked. Noah knew the inside of the ship better than anyone else. He knew all the little hidey-holes, the empty spaces, and the forgotten passageways. The others, they never really asked him how he did it, how he just managed to come and go. If they asked, he would tell them. He would show them the service tunnels made when the ship was originally built but long forgotten, tell them of chutes and vents, and take them through the giant spinning cogs of the machinery that kept the ship afloat in the air. He knew all these places, could go anywhere he wanted as quickly as he could scurry. He watched, and he waited from his little spaces.

But the thing is, no had ever asked him.

He wanted to give them answers. It was very much in Noah's being to be gently helpful and subtly supportive. But it was not in his being to volunteer information. He simply couldn't say if they didn't want to know.

They had not asked him a lot of things. For example they never asked him where he came from or what his name was. They never wondered why it wasn't particularly English. They didn't ponder how he managed to get a job aboard this ship with his pale, sickly skin and his stick-thin arms. They didn't ask. So Noah had simply never told. 

But Blue, Blue was different, Noah could feel it. The others, they had secrets and they knew secrets. Adam had the ability to puzzle through anything, putting two and two together to fix a puzzle. Gansey could discover something so long hidden, it had forgotten itself. And Ronan had a way of digging up the deep dark blackness that slumbered in ever person's soul. But Blue was different. She could see the details, the tiny threads. She was like a magnifying glass, expanding and making everything bigger. Yes, she would be able to see.

Blue would ask him.

But Noah did not have any more time to stop and think. He had places he must be, places he must be. So he scurried in the dark like a rat, no light showing his path, but his memory guiding his every footstep and his mind illuminating the creaking metal passageway.


	5. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> up all night to have fun, up all night to get secrets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am sorry friends that it only took 6 months for me to update this. Whoops. I still love this concept and I hope that you will bear with me while I try to make it through this fic. It might take 10 years. Who knows. Just check back every 6 months. Hopefully I will have published something I can make money off of by then. Would anyone be interested in reading original work like short stories if I published it here (on ao3)? Like non-AdamxRonan angst. Eh, let me know with a comment or something. Also I'm writing this right before I go to college so maybe after taking writing classes my writing will get more coherent and I won't go on weird tangents and call Adam a tomato, unless you are into that sort of thing. In which case. That kid is a weird fruit. Also send me prompts for shorter fics to get my creative juices running. You can suggest on my tumblr: bearlyepic.tumblr.com ;3

Blue returned to her bunk wanting to bash her head against the metal plating of the ship's hull. Of course, Gansey had awkwardly followed her, like she was some kind of southern belle who needed to be escorted everywhere and not a newly discovered criminal-slash-traitor-to-the-British-Empire. He stood outside the tiny room she shared with about eleven other people, all of whom he assumed were men. It was hard to tell now. Gansey would spend a great deal of time studying his subordinates after the whole Jane situation. Speaking of, he simply avoided looking at her, staring just above where her dark hair spiked. He left after a few moments of awkward silence and a mumbled good night.

What was wrong with him? And most importantly, what was wrong with her? She should be making a vow to avoid everything that had to do with Richard Gansey III and his cohorts. But it kept her up that night as she gazed at the dim reflection of copper and brass pipework, moving steam and water throughout the entire ship, keeping her up and running. She couldn't say if it was worry, because that wasn't the right word.

Sure, she could be executed, or well, thrown from the deck, (which at a couple thousand feet was much the same thing), but that wasn't what was bothering her. It was like an itch she couldn't scratch. She had the feeling that Gansey, or Ronan, or even that southern boy Adam wouldn't out her. They seemed to welcome her, in a strange way. But she couldn't trust them. She didn't trust any body. It was in her nature to be a little stand off-ish, a little stubborn, a little solitary. Sure, it was different at home, but everyone there was much the same way. At home they were like the inner workings of the AS Henrietta. They were all separate parts, separate beings, but they worked together in their own way. 

Maybe that was the itch.

The boys were in a way like the women of her home, minus the accusations of witch craft (which was reasonable) and banishment (which was unreasonable). They were all different but they fit together.

As the darkness of sleep began to weigh on the edges of her lashes, and her eyes fluttered, Blue came to an unsettling realization. She fit with them. She was like a part they didn't know was missing but as soon as she was added, the machine finally worked. But what was she to do when she didn't want to be apart of that machine? But what was she to do when she felt like she was floating in empty space without them?

 

Ronan did not dream in the ordinary sense. It was crisp, clear, always seared into his brain when he awoke. Something had stirred him in the night, something made his dark eyes open to gaze above him, tuned his ears to the gentle rasping breaths escaping from Adam, made his skin sensitive enough to feel a gentle stirring. There was no grogginess in his form. He had been woken before, of course, suddenly and without warning. When you are a wanted criminal you don't often get a good night's sleep. He turned his head to gaze a the pocket above his heart, sown inside of his shirt.

It was where he kept it.

It of course was his treasure, his stone. And it was moving. If Ronan wasn't so wide awake, so wonderfully connected to the present, in a way he rarely was, then he might have thought that he was dreaming, feeling the twisting and twitching against the skin of his chest. It moved again, and there was a sound like shattered glass. Adam murmured in his sleep, nothing but an incoherent drawl. He was a heavy sleeper, always dreaming when Ronan was in the fit of a nightmare, or pacing on the constantly shifting ground beneath them. 

Whatever it was, it was warm and moving. It was, Ronan discovered, alive. He felt it struggle, searching for an escape from the fabric entrapment. He snaked a hand up to ease open the collar of his tunic, and a dark face, as black as coal and as shiny as the stone it emerged from stared at him with beady eyes. He could barely see it, barely discern what was its body and what was his own. 

He blinked, and it mimicked him. It chirped. He let out a low whistle. It dragged itself forward, crawling from his shoulder up the side of his face. It was no bigger than a baby mouse maybe, but completely hairless. Or maybe it was something that didn't have hair in the first place. It scrabbled to the very top of his shaved head, hunkering down where dark hair might have grown. 

He reached his hand into his pocket to find the shards of the stone he had watched over, had kept safe for so long. The creature let out a satisfied breath, and he could feel it relax along his scalp, a thin tail tickling his temple. The Irishman was calm, more so than most would be in his situation. 

Ah, but what was one more secret?


End file.
